A little taste…

Hi all! Today I’m celebrating with a snippet from Torque, my bi-ace-trans poly love story. The reason behind the celebration? The rights for this story are mine~all mine!~and i’ve released the 2nd edition. So far it’s only available at PayHip and Amazon, but I’m hoping to get it back on all distribution sites soon.

This snippet is from Scotty’s POV, it’s one of the few places where it’s obvious that Mick is Latino. I didn’t play that up with the first release, mainly because it’s not a source of conflict in the story. Now, i’m wondering if that was a huge mistake.

Anyway. This snippet is a little longer than six sentences, so it makes sense.

“Your tan. Is it from the sun?”

“No.” He tensed, and his voice sounded final, but he didn’t make any move to get up.

“Do you have some Mexican in you?”

Scotty liked to look at long expanses of brown skin. He almost laughed out loud when he thought that. He’d never given much thought to skin of any color before, except Mercy’s, which was usually the color of blank paper until summer when her shoulders and nose would turn red and then fade into a trucker’s tan. But laughing right then would’ve been bad timing. Not to mention lessen the significance of having a naked Mick in his bed.

Sometimes letting things get complicated is the best way to figure it all out.

Mick Randall is on the run, from the biker culture he grew up in and his impossible vision of love. Alaska should be far enough to escape his old life—until he rolls into a wrecking yard and gets lost in a pair of pale, bottle-green eyes.

Scotty Bell has spent years learning to channel his fiery temper into the heat of a welding torch. His sexual heat has always been slower to ignite, but one look at Mick rouses confusion alongside desire. In all his life, he’s only been attracted to one other person—his best friend, Mercy Taylor.

Mick lands a temporary job at the yard, and finds an uneasy crash pad at Scotty’s place, where the ragged ends of his emotions get tangled up in Scotty and Mercy’s relationship.

But when Mick hears a Harley engine from his past bearing down on him, his first instinct is to go back to the half-life he’d been living, lest his secrets destroy the only two people who’ve ever made him feel whole.

Warning: Contains references to abuse, subversive ideas about sexual identity and gender expression, and a free-range bisexual on a mission.

It’s a charming character developmental point about Scotty, that he didn’t notice. You did a beautiful job of showing what he does notice, the unique personal details about someone’s appearance and how their personality creates it.